// Phaedrus 227β

Σωκράτης: ὦ φίλε Φαῖδρε, ποῖ δὴ καὶ πόθεν;
Socrates: Beloved Phaedrus, where to and where from?

(…)

Φαῖδρος: πεύσῃ, εἴ σοι σχολὴ προϊόντι ἀκούειν.
Phaedrus: You will learn, if there is leisure for you, as you go, to hear.

Σωκράτης: τί δέ; οὐκ ἂν οἴει με κατὰ Πίνδαρον “καὶ ἀσχολίας ὑπέρτερον πρᾶγμα” ποιήσασθαι τὸ τεήν τε καὶ Λυσίου διατριβὴν ἀκοῦσαι;
Socrates: What? Don’t you think, as Pindar, I would make it “a matter higher even than non-leisure (business)”, to hear about your and Lysias' spending?

//

Behold, the destiny of human (political) being in its interior conflict: between the erotic-philosophic (desirous and r/evolutionary) soul and the material body’s need for (protective and conservative) law; with its resolution in the dialectic of (political/poetic) education; the infinite freedom of the human soul, as philosophy, is yoked (by logos/music), in service as conservation, to the body (politic/imaginary).

(Here is my Plato-feeling, “tree-reading” I should call it, or a tentative shorthand, The Republic in a nutshell, but with all of these other things, %gestures at blog%, in mind, and always, of course, through the lens of Phaedrus.

Translating you is mothering multitudes.)

//

I got caught up (through these next few lines of Phaedrus, which revolve poetically around leisure, and get sling-shotted around by Socrates' inversionary or may I call it tropical conservatism) thinking about leisure and responsibility, duty to parents and country, what one owes, how one serves. So I got caught up thinking about mothers and fathers. You can’t talk about “where from” without leisure, says Phaedrus. But you really can’t talk about it without mothers and fathers, and their celebration (in poetry), which is right where Socrates puts us, with Pindar, in Isthmian 1.

Then it happened that writing about fathers found me in a dark place, and I didn’t feel good about posting what I wrote. I will post it, but I needed to write this first.

To whom do I owe pleasure?

To whom do I owe life?

(Fertile Phthia is like the valley below, but for Achilles.

The valley below is like Key West, but for me.)

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Listening to Bob Dylan’s more recent Rough and Rowdy Ways. Playing it for the chickens, it’s a great sound for them, they love it. For me, I’m always trying to be ready for this album, ever since I wasn’t several years ago, (the first year of the pandemic), when it was released. (That whole first year, I could only listen to two albums, but that’s another story for another time.) One of the boys practices crowing for “Black Rider”. As if to say, “these kids”, Frankie starts in with “Goodbye Jimmy Reed”. He sounds so eloquent and sleekly up-tempo with Bob’s Tennessee whisky-soaked blues.

And then Bob takes us to church with “Mother of Muses”. Something about this reminds me of Little Drummer Boy, (from my favorite Christmas album, I admit, every year I weep for this song), it is a hymn sung with the same dutiful reverence, Bob’s most lovely and humble offering for Her. There is an Illiad and an Odyssey in his storyful prayer. Key West is a place to get away, (the one we need), the permission to go, the road and the highway sign to get there. (Honestly surprised at how many holes these fathers have left, written into the city walls. If only I trust myself to find them.)

Sunset and the bending-of-light through its longing shades of exit, and plentiful tears falling again for “Murder Most Foul”. I am learning from Bob how to remember someone who was already dead before I was born. Bob sings a shining, shimmering like-a-mirage, place of hope, dream on a hill.

The hardest thing about the death of a parent, from what I have seen, or what I have heard, is a leftover feeling of guilt, as of a duty unfulfilled. I wonder what kinds of things Bob feels responsible for, I mean to speak of history. He was there as the centerpiece of revolutionary American culture, although he constantly resisted being there, in his perverse way, until that worked and he wasn’t there, anymore. But he was at the heart of it, so if anybody could feel the pulsating heartbeat, I believe it would be Bob. He tells of the leaning over and falling of the body, into her lap, he tells me there was something alive, and then it was not, and (whispering, by now) it did not die a natural death. It was, he repeats, “a murder most foul”, and as I am alive, I believe him.

He gives us the funeral we need (at least, we who are left to listen).

It is a slow procession, full of myriad moments bitter and painful, a retrospective drawn by sorrowful progress toward the inevitable end. American destiny. Every dreamlike revolution is new tears flowing, emptying out in grandiose repetition, as an over-abundance of scattered light. It is a song of anger that would be too deep to feel, were it not already healing itself, like a laundering in the sea. The taste of frothy sand in Key West, washing away the beach, washing away the stain of the crime. Like Jackie washing the blood off her clothes, America washing the death off her clothes, after all the years. Our bard fulfills his final duty, delivering the eulogy, that’s what it feels like. After more than fifty years spent trying to understand who it was, what it was that died. Seeing the shining, past the anger, through the grief, of love.

Can’t talk about elders without talking about Bob Dylan. He tore it apart, turned it upside-down, and re-made it whole, again and again. A parent for poets and pirates, and probably philosophers too. (Remember that time when he gave us a recipe for figgy pudding on TTRH?) Love you forever, Bob.

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(About.)